Note 205 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

Alike in the details of his propaganda and in the temper of his utterance, Bruno expresses from first to last the spirit of freethought and free speech. Libertas philosophica205 is the breath of his nostrils; and by his life and his death alike he upholds the ideal for men as no other before him did. The wariness of Rabelais and the non-committal skepticism of Montaigne are alike alien to him; he is too lacking in reticence, too explosive, to give due heed even to the common-sense amenities of life, much more to hedge his meaning with safeguarding qualifications. And it was doubtless as much by the contagion of his mood as by his lore that he impressed men.